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What’s on your nightstand when you’re at the helm of a fast-growing startup? The founders we asked proved that inspiration doesn't just come from the usual list of books on leadership and management but more intriguingly an eclectic mix of science fiction, personal essays and even the odd chemistry textbook.

“The last two books I read were Ender's Game and Cat's Cradle,” says Matt Salzberg, founder and CEO of Blue Apron, a service which delivers subscribers the exact proportions of ingredients to cook a weekly selection of recipes.

“Ender's Game is actually a great read for CEOs,” says Salzberg. The 1985 science fiction classic by Orson Scott Card which was recently made into a film “demonstrates how important empathetic instincts are in strategy and leadership,” says Salzberg. Cat's Cradle is a 1963 satirical novel by Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut's 4th novel, it's often seen as a wry and subversive look at religion and science.

Rob May, cofounder and CEO of Backupify, one of the first cloud to cloud backup providers is into reading about how the mind perceives meaning through language. “I just finished A User's Guide to Thought and Meaning by Ray Jackendoff. If you are interested in the connection between language, thought, and the brain, it's awesome,” he says. May is also working his way through the business shelves. “I also recently read The Outsiders by William Thorndike, a book about unconventional CEOs and I'm currently reading The Challenger Sale by Dixon and Abramson,” he added.

For a more historical take on executive strategy founder and CEO J Sider of Bandpage recommends Lincoln On Leadership by Donald T. Phillips. His startup Bandpage is an application that lets musicians create customizable fan pages within Facebook, now used by over 500,000 artists.

Russell D’Souza, cofounder of SeatGeek, a search engine for the best deals on tickets for local events, appreciates books you can dip in and out of. “I go through stretches when I read a lot and ones where I don't pick up a book for a few months. Right now, I'm reading Jonathan Franzen's How to be Alone - it's a collection of essays which is perfect since I can pick it up at any point without having to remember anything,” he says. In the 14 essays, Franzen who wrote The Corrections and Freedom, explores a wide range of subjects including Alzheimer's disease, the U.S. postal service, New York City, prisons, privacy and the tobacco industry.

Malcolm Gladwell was listed by two of the Founders we asked. Daniel Robichaud, founder of PasswordBox, a password manager startup said The Tipping Point “shows us how social and viral is our human world.” Cofounder of Cozy, a startup trying to make landlord-tenant relationships easier, Gino Zahnd mentioned Outliers, Gladwell's 2008 book which asks what makes high-achievers different. "They are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot," writes Gladwell in Outliers.

Zahnd is also reading Tribal Leadership, a look at the myriad of corporate tribes and Johy Ive's The Genius Behind ’s Greatest Products on his iPad.

“This is a little weird but I read textbooks,” says Adora Cheung, cofounder of Homejoy, a cleaning service startup which just raised $38 million in venture capital funding. “Before Homejoy took off, I was obsessed with developing a full-proof way to combat Asian Flush so on my nightstand gathering dust for the past year is a chemistry book that a doctor friend suggested,” she says.

Edward Saatchi gave us one of the most arts-driven list of books. The cofounder of NationalField which began life as a platform to help organize Obama's 2008 campaign and now provides businesses with private social networks, mentioned Moments that Made the Movies by David Thomson, Maestro A Biography of Alan Greenspan by Bob and Eadward Muybridge's Photographs. In keeping with his political interests, Saatchi also recommends Rules For Radicals by Saul Alinsky. First published in 1971 Rules for Radicals is an impassioned argument on how to effect constructive social change and know “the difference between being a realistic radical and being a rhetorical one.”

Iqram Magdon-Ismail, cofounder of Venmo, an app that lets friends make payments to each other recommends Siddhartha, a novel by Hermann Hesse about the spiritual journey of self-discovery during the time of the Gautama Buddha.

InteraXon cofounder and CEO Ariel Garten, which makes a brain sensing headband that can be used to interact with computers, picked The Life of Pi by Yann Martel.

Brad Stone’s The Everything Store, a chronicle of Jeff Bezos and Amazon’s ascent was named by both Pat Phelan, Founder of Trustev, an ecommerce fraud prevention application and Matt Salzberg founder of Blue Apron.